What can the ICRC do for farmers who encounter such problems?
Most of our efforts are aimed at helping people in the centre of the West Bank, where the barrier’s routing has all but cut off access to many olive groves. We can help farmers in various ways. For example, this winter, we will provide 70,000 olive seedlings to farmers who were not permitted to properly maintain their trees, or whose trees were uprooted or burnt. It is expensive to replace trees, so this is an effective way to help them. Normally, it can take hours to pluck all the olives from a single tree, depending on how many people are involved. But some farmers, whose groves are behind the barrier or close to settlements, are only given a relatively short time to pick the olives by their Israeli military escorts. In order to reduce the time it takes to harvest, we have handed out plastic sheeting and mechanical harvesting devices that help shake the olives off the trees quickly. The olives fall on the plastic sheeting and can then be collected in sacks. We also provide ad hoc ass
